Great news.

The first volume of The Complete Peanuts is out. (But buy it here, it's cheaper.) Excellent review in the American Spectator.

[Found via the Western Standard.]

Troy.

I'm astonished at the level of vitriol being dumped on this movie. Yes, we all know it's more fun to write a negative review, but while Troy is hardly a perfect film, it certainly doesn't deserve the scorn being heaped upon it by people who should know better (I'm looking at you, Ebert.) In fact, if I were to damn the enterprise with faint praise, the least I could say for it is that it beats the hell out of Gladiator, which travesty of history was greeted with swooning delight by critics and the public at large. Still, the audience will judge a work as they see fit. But there are a few points I'd like to make in defense of the film:

The film isn't called The Iliad for a reason, and that reason is that it's not a direct adaptation of The Iliad. Homer didn't originate the story of the Trojan war. He wrote the best-known versions of two parts of the saga in the Iliad and the Odyssey, but these are not the only source materials. The choice of Paris (i.e., the selection of the most beautiful among Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite and subsequent awarding of Helen) does not appear in the Iliad. Neither does the abduction of Helen. Neither does the Trojan horse. Neither do the deaths of Achilles, nor Paris, nor Agamemnon. Criticisms based on a supposed lack of fidelity to the Iliad would seem to miss the point in this regard.

For those waxing wroth over the fact that Troy compresses the timeline and doesn't present the story as a ten-year seige: I'm absolutely agog to hear suggestions as to how to keep the narrative on point and cover ten years in a three hour movie. Hell, it took Peter Jackson THREE MOVIES and something like TWELVE HOURS to adequately cover the events of a single year in the Lord of the Rings saga, and even with that much space to spread out in he completely hosed up the pacing in the third film so that it appears to be a 15-minute ride to the Morannon from Minas Tirith, despite the fact that the same journey took Frodo half the length of the film. (Granted, he was walking/staggering.) The narrowing of the scope of the film seems an entirely sensible compromise.

For those further waxing wroth over the absence of the gods: you've got to be joking. Has it really been so long since Clash of the Titans that you're actually prepared to swear you'd treat the movie seriously if you'd seen Paris being wafted away in the middle of his fight with Menelaus on Aphrodite's cloud? Because that's precisely how he escapes being butchered in the text, and I frankly can't imagine not snickering. The film isn't being presented as mythology; it's being presented as a quasi-historical version of events--much as King Arthur is purported to be (the critical drubbing being extended to Troy doesn't bode well for this film. I can already hear the weeping over the abandonment of Mallory's text. Gad.) Besides, apart from the issue of believability, the movie already has a large cast; adding the gods to the script would only further diffuse the focus of the story.

Having seen it twice I find some of the casting criticisms bizarre, but I won't argue with subjective opinion. I think Brad Pitt is just fine as Achilles. Eric Bana is as steady and somber as Hector ought to be. Orlando Bloom is perfectly-cast as Paris (the worst character in Western literature); he's a doe-eyed prettyboy--which is kinda the point--if a bit too much of a thickie as written. As a bonus, he and Bana also actually looked quite a bit like brothers on-screen. Brian Cox is gloriously hammy as Agamemnon; Brendan Gleeson is good as Menelaus (my personal favorite scene in the film is the ass-kicking he gives Paris. He just looks completely nuts from the helmet-cam perspective. Sure, it's cheesy. But it adds an indefinable something.) I'm pleased to say Peter O'Toole brought his screen presence with him, and as an added bonus you get Nigel Terry as his spiritual advisor. All the women are fine in their parts, under-written as they are; even Helen doesn't get a lot of dialog, but the film never purported to be an exploration of her tormented soul, and I'm good with that.

In all, it's not the greatest film I've ever seen and it didn't force me to reevaluate my entire existence, but I don't generally require that of a film. It's just an engrossing story competently written, shot, acted, and directed. I wouldn't think to ask for more.

Addendum: Bill McCabe may never forgive me if I don't point out that the legendary Sean Bean is excellent as Odysseus.

That was a hell of a thing.

I just watched Randy Johnson throw a perfect game against the Braves. Just when I finally get fed up enough to shun the game of games, something like this happens.

Out of their gourds in Cannes.

Like that's news to anyone.

First item: Fifty Million Frenchmen and Fat Fuck Michael Moore can, in fact, be wrong.

Second item: Sean Penn thinks there aren't nearly enough political films. The money quote:

Penn saw his Oscar win as a sign of hope.

"I think what it says is that while it's absolutely a real concern that the venue for debate is being diminished, that the tolerance for it is still in the will of the American people, still in the will of the business I work in and evidently in the will of the audience," he said.

Is it even remotely possible he thinks audiences vote for the Oscars? Moreover, I don't see how pushing a leftist agenda constitutes "debate". Michael Moore's bullshit documentaries, worshipful biopics of undertalented Stalin-lovin' painter Frida Kahlo, and Ollie Stone mash notes to jackbooted thug Fidel Castro seem to be the only political "art" mainstream Hollywood finds itself capable of producing--and that's not debate. That's propaganda. That is the will of the business Penn works in, and the will of the people be damned.

Links via Drudge.

Quick Van Helsing review.

Cartoonish CGI, assaultive score, bad script, some bad accents. Kevin J. O'Connor is wasted under a makeup job so cheesy ST:TNG would have rejected it, his few soft-spoken wisecracks obscured by the blaring soundtrack and sabotaged by the editing. Hugh Jackman spends his time trying to look sensitive and serious in a role that would have benefitted from some over-the-top swagger. (C'mon, guy, you've got a gas-powered machinegun-action crossbow. Rambo it up a little.) Kate Beckinsale labors to deliver turgid lines in a wavering Bela Lugosi accent. Richard Roxburgh has borne the brunt of the acting criticism for a hammy performance, but when contrasted against the rest of the performances, he was at least moderately entertaining.

Look, it's a popcorn movie. Don't pay full price. Hit the matinee, take some cotton for your ears, sit back and let it wash over you, and don't ask too many questions.

No, I don't know either.

Neither why it's taking for fargin' ever to load this stupid page, nor why the links are hosed. As God is my witness, I typed the anchor tags in the previous post out manually; how Blogger managed to mangle the second and third ones is beyond my ken. It probably has something to do with the fact that I get an error every time I try to publish, although the page publishes anyway. Nice relaunch, guys. The playpretties are no good if they don't actually work.

Update: Ok, now the links are fixed, though I'm not quite sure how I did it. Publishing is still a mess, at least on my end.

Like school, you keep me young.

All the cool kids are doing it, so I thought I might as well join in and flaunt that oh-so valuable English degree (and possibly reveal the parochial nature of my literary tastes.) Titles in bold have been sucessfully completed; titles in italics have been attempted and abandoned either temporarily or out of varying degrees of exasperation.

Beowulf – Verse and prose translations.
Achebe, Chinua - Things Fall Apart
Agee, James - A Death in the Family
Austen, Jane - Pride and Prejudice
Baldwin, James - Go Tell It on the Mountain
Beckett, Samuel - Waiting for Godot – Hell no.
Bellow, Saul - The Adventures of Augie March
Bronte, Charlotte - Jane Eyre
Bronte, Emily - Wuthering Heights
Camus, Albert - The Stranger
Cather, Willa - Death Comes for the Archbishop
Chaucer, Geoffrey - The Canterbury Tales
Chekhov, Anton - The Cherry Orchard
Chopin, Kate - The Awakening
Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness
Cooper, James Fenimore - The Last of the Mohicans – I liked it. I don’t care what Twain says.
Crane, Stephen - The Red Badge of Courage
Dante - Inferno
de Cervantes, Miguel - Don Quixote
Defoe, Daniel - Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Charles - A Tale of Two Cities
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - Crime and Punishment
Douglass, Frederick - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Dreiser, Theodore - An American Tragedy
Dumas, Alexandre - The Three Musketeers
Eliot, George - The Mill on the Floss
Ellison, Ralph - Invisible Man
Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Selected Essays – “To be great is to be misunderstood.” Whatever you say, Ralph.
Faulkner, William - As I Lay Dying
Faulkner, William - The Sound and the Fury
Fielding, Henry - Tom Jones
Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby
Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary
Ford, Ford Madox - The Good Soldier
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von - Faust
Golding, William - Lord of the Flies
Hardy, Thomas - Tess of the d’Urbervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter
Heller, Joseph - Catch 22
Hemingway, Ernest - A Farewell to Arms
Homer - The Iliad
Homer - The Odyssey
Hugo, Victor - The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hurston, Zora Neale - Their Eyes Were Watching God
Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World
Ibsen, Henrik - A Doll’s House
James, Henry - The Portrait of a Lady
James, Henry - The Turn of the Screw
Joyce, James - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Kafka, Franz - The Metamorphosis
Kingston, Maxine Hong - The Woman Warrior – The one interesting book in that damned ChickLit course.
Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird
Lewis, Sinclair - Babbitt
London, Jack - The Call of the Wild
Mann, Thomas - The Magic Mountain – the big thing was Death in Venice when I was in college.
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Melville, Herman - Bartleby the Scrivener
Melville, Herman - Moby Dick – I liked the technical whaling info. It was Billy Budd that made me want to kill.
Miller, Arthur - The Crucible
Morrison, Toni – Beloved - Also The Bluest Eye. Agh.
O’Connor, Flannery - “A Good Man is Hard to Find”
O’Neill, Eugene - Long Day’s Journey into Night
Orwell, George - Animal Farm
Pasternak, Boris - Doctor Zhivago
Plath, Sylvia - The Bell Jar – Good God, no.
Poe, Edgar Allan - Selected Tales – I’ve read them all.
Proust, Marcel - Swann’s Way
Pynchon, Thomas - The Crying of Lot 49
Remarque, Erich Maria - All Quiet on the Western Front
Rostand, Edmond - Cyrano de Bergerac
Roth, Henry - Call It Sleep
Salinger, J.D. - The Catcher in the Rye
Shakespeare, William - Hamlet
Shakespeare, William - Macbeth
Shakespeare, William - A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Shakespeare, William - Romeo and Juliet
Shaw, George Bernard - Pygmalion
Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein
Silko, Leslie Marmon - Ceremony
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Sophocles - Antigone
Sophocles - Oedipus Rex
Steinbeck, John - The Grapes of Wrath
Stevenson, Robert Louis - Treasure Island
Stowe, Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Swift, Jonathan - Gulliver’s Travels
Thackeray, William - Vanity Fair – The wittier version of War and Peace.
Thoreau, Henry David - Walden
Tolstoy, Leo - War and Peace
Turgenev, Ivan - Fathers and Sons
Twain, Mark - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Voltaire - Candide
Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. - Slaughterhouse-Five
Walker, Alice - The Color Purple
Wharton, Edith - The House of Mirth
Welty, Eudora - Collected Stories
Whitman, Walt - Leaves of Grass
Wilde, Oscar - The Picture of Dorian Gray
Williams, Tennessee - The Glass Menagerie
Woolf, Virginia - To the Lighthouse
Wright, Richard - Native Son

There’s a strong whiff of multiculturalist revisionism coming off this list (not to mention a dearth of Roman authors); putting Alice Walker on the same level as Jane Austen is a crime against literature. Personal additions (by no means exhaustive):

The Arabian Nights
Aristophanes – Birds, Clouds, Frogs. Take your pick.
Bunyan, John - Pilgrim's Progress
Gilgamesh
Gogol, Nikolai - The Nose, The Inspector General
Graves, Robert - I, Claudius
Grimm, The Brothers - Grimm's Fairy Tales
Machiavelli, Niccolo - The Prince
Milton, John - Paradise Lost
Mitchell, Margaret - Gone With the Wind
Scott, Sir Walter - Ivanhoe
Shakespeare - Julius Caesar and King Lear
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Tacitus - The Annals and The Histories
Vergil - The Aeneid


Poets: Auden, Dickinson, Donne, Frost, Nash, Pope, Pushkin, Tennyson, Wordsworth.

Feh.

Typically shitty Blogger implementation.

Update: The big kink seems to be the publishing feature, which keeps hanging up. Just like it used to. I wish they wouldn't break the parts that work.

Blogger changes.

Looks like Blogger has changed its interface yet again and added comment ability. Likely to be some confusion around here till I get this straightened out; old comments are likely to be snuffed out at some point.

Baseball is dead to me.

MLB strikes a sweetheart deal with unrighteous Mammon:

In the latest example of a sponsor's stamp on the sports world, ads for the movie "Spider-Man 2" will be placed atop bases at 15 major league ballparks during games from June 11-13.

According to an article Paula sent me yesterday, they originally wanted to spiderweb the foul nets behind the plate, but it was conjectured that that might interfere with play, for some reason.

The promotion, announced Wednesday, is part of baseball's pitch to appeal to younger fans - and make money along the way.

You know what? Screw the younger fans. 1) they can't see the bases from the stands anyway, and 2) chances are they're too busy playing grabass and flicking boogers on each other to care.

"This was a unique chance to combine what is a sort of a universally popular character and our broad fan base, including the youth market we're trying to reach out to," said Bob DuPuy, baseball's chief operating officer. "It doesn't impact the play or performance of the game."

No, it doesn't impact the play (I hate using impact as a verb, btw.) It does remove whatever tattered shreds of dignity remained to the game and exposes everyone involved as the whores they are, though.

[...] The ads, about 4-by-4-inches with a red background and yellow webbing, won't appear on home plate.

Again, no one's going to be able to see them, except via camera.

[...] "We need to reach out to a younger demographic to bring them to the ballpark," Parkes said. "They are looking for nontraditional breakthrough ways to convey 'Spider-Man' messaging. ... It's the future of how we generate excitement inside the stadium and about the game itself."

What about my demographic--you know, people who work and have disposable income? How the fuck is a 4" square ad going to generate excitement for anybody?

Baseball will receive about $3.6 million in a deal negotiated by Major League Baseball Properties with Marvel Studios and Columbia Pictures, a division of Sony Inc., a high-ranking baseball executive said on condition of anonymity.

The New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox will get more than $100,000 each, one team executive said, also on condition of anonymity. Most of the other 13 teams playing at home that weekend will get about $50,000 apiece, the team executive said.

Of course the Yankees get extra. It wouldn't be baseball if the distribution was equitable.

[...] Ralph Nader, a presidential candidate and consumer advocate, criticized the deal. He wrote Tuesday to baseball commissioner Bud Selig, denouncing the decision to have ads on uniforms during the season-opening series in March between the Yankees and Tampa Bay Devil Rays in Tokyo.

"It's gotten beyond grotesque," Nader said. "The fans have to revolt here. Otherwise, they'll be looking at advertisements between advertisements."

Ten thousand devils plague Bud Selig and his minions for this: they have forced me to agree with Ralph Nader on something.

[...] In separate promotions, the bases also will feature pink ribbons Sunday as part of a Mother's Day promotion to raise breast-cancer awareness, and they will have blue ribbons on Father's Day, June 20, to raise prostate-cancer awareness.

Brief side rant: ENOUGH WITH THE FUCKING RIBBONS. I'M FUCKING AWARE. THE RIBBONS HAVE LONG SINCE STOPPED REMINDING ME OF ANYTHING BUT THE WEARER'S PRETENSIONS TO MORAL SUPERIORITY.

And now the best part of this whole thing:

John Hirschbeck, head of the World Umpires Association, said the ads won't make it harder for umpires to make calls at the bases. And it wouldn't bother him if umpires' uniforms had ads - as long as they share the profit.

"We've got it on jockeys' pants. Why not?" he said.

If you don't know, Hirschbeck, you ignorant slut, I guess there's no point in talking about it. All my baseball shit goes in the dumpster tonight.

Shut up and drink the Kool-Aid.

Because there is no silly game I won't play:

1. Grab the nearest CD.
2. Put it in your CD-Player (or start your mp3-player, I-tunes, etc.).
3. Skip to Song 3 (or load the 3rd song in your 3rd playlist)
4. Post the first verse in your journal along with these instructions. Don’t name the band, nor the album-title.

Along about round-up time In Texas way out West
I lost a friend and a pal, boys I laid him down to rest
I weeped and moaned over his grave and to me boys it was sad
'Cause I knew down beneath that mound lay the best pal I ever had

[Emily gets the credit or blame, because I saw it there first.]

Couple o' links.

Neurotically Yours, via Dean Esmay (from a day or two ago; so funny I want to be able to find it again, so I'm posting it here.)

And from the where-are-they-now files, today's Wham update on Ace o' Spades. Be warned: the picture is startling.

Boycott the Derby.

It's what the jockeys were threatening to do if they didn't get to wear ads on their pants.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Jockeys can wear advertising patches during the Kentucky Derby, a judge ruled Thursday.

U.S. District Judge John Heyburn II's decision two days before the country's premier horse race applies only to seven jockeys who sued, including Jerry Bailey, Alex Solis, Jose Santos, and John Velazquez.

They cited the First Amendment in successfully asking that the judge grant a preliminary injunction to block enforcement of a state rule that bars jockeys from wearing advertising, promotional or cartoon symbols during races.

I wasn't aware the founding fathers were so prescient that they actually drafted a right to sell advertising space on one's clothing right into the Constitution. Silly me, I thought the first amendment only applied to political speech. Guess that's why I'm not a goddamn US District Judge.

The jockeys issued a statement after the ruling, saying the ads would be tasteful.

Oh, heavens, yes. Just like NASCAR, which we all know is all about the tasteful.

"We are very sensitive to the traditions of our sport and our goal is not to offend anyone," said Bailey, a two-time Derby winner who will ride Wimbledon on Saturday.

If you were actually sensitive to the traditions of the sport, this issue wouldn't have come up.

"Jockeys work very hard and risk our lives on a daily basis. We have earned the right to make additional income," he said.

I look forward to the opening of the jockey brothel next door to the Downs, then.

Jockey Pat Day, not part of either lawsuit, said before the ruling that the case could have a major impact on the sport.

"The industry is going through some dramatic changes," said Day, Churchill Downs' winningest rider. "It would be nice to stick with tradition, but we also have to do what's best for the game and for the longevity of the game."

I'll be goddamned. I didn't know Bud Selig had branched out to other sports. [Thanks to Paula for the link.]

The first stirrings of unease re Kong.

First, the good news: casting.

Naomi Watts will play the big ape's love object, Ann Darrow. Adrien Brody will play Darrow's boyfriend, former WWII pilot Jack Driscoll, and Jack Black will be blustery adventurer Carl Denham, who imports Kong to Manhattan.

Jack Black is perfect for Denham. Watts and Brody will be adequate, if dull. Now the bad news: Peter Jackson has lost his fucking mind.

"Everybody's image of 'King Kong' is that it's this amazing beauty-and-the-beast love story. And when you look at the original film, there is as sense that Kong is feeling an attraction toward Ann-probably the first empathy he's felt in his life toward another living creature. But Ann is not giving him a thing. She just looks at him as an object of horror the entire time. She screams at him, she's terrified. Her relationship with Kong doesn't go beyond that. We're having a lot of fun making it more psychologically real."

DUDE. You're making a movie about a giant goddamn monkey. What the hell does that even mean in this context, psychologically real? Are we going to be forced to sit through three hours of Watts and Brody crying like hobbits? Look, this is not Shakespeare. You've basically got a freakishly large monkey, a chick, and the Empire State building to work with. Do not fuck this up by drenching it in emotional excess.

Somewhere Julia Child is laughing her ass off.

We're apparently in the middle of a renaissance of variety meats, which is excellent. If the trend comes down to my being able to buy lamb and veal kidneys at Meijer I'm for it. (For steak and kidney pie. Stop looking at me like that, it's delicious.)

[Via Arts & Letters Daily.]

Torturing Clio.

Once again Hollywood prepares to savage the muse of History so Tom Cruise can put caviar on the table:

THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN WAS WON BY A SINGLE AMERICAN AIRMAN (...OR SO HOLLYWOOD IS ABOUT TO TELL US)

Winston Churchill said it was our "finest hour", but yesterday it was revealed the Battle of Britain was won single-handedly by Tom Cruise. Amid outrage from the West's war veterans and military historians, a new Hollywood film will claim that one American, Billy Fiske - played by Cruise - was responsible for the 1940 victory.

Ok, so filming hasn't started yet, and I'm jumping on the bash-Hollywood bandwagon before it's properly left the gate. Not to mention the fact that the people quoted in the article frankly sound like they have an enormous chip on their collective shoulders regarding America's part in WWII. When it comes to Cruise, however, any gun-jumping I do before the fact is absolutely justified--nay, righteous--since he so often proves me right after the fact.

Resign yourself. There will be bitching.

[Via Plastic Gangster, who's just a bit peeved by the news.]

Nothing like having your finger on the pulse of the nation.

One would think a film that's grossed $361M domestically in two months would have no problem being picked up for television re-broadcast, particularly a film pitched toward the Easter holiday season like "The Passion of the Christ". One would be wrong, of course.

The movie's graphic scenes of Jesus' crucifixion are said to make broadcasters skittish, particularly in the post-Janet Jackson era, when government officials are closely watching what goes on television.

Not to make untoward comparisons about Janet Jackson being martyred or anything, but are we really going to conflate the scourging and crucifixion of Christ with tit-flashing during a major sporting event?

Besides the film's violent content, a network that airs the film would also inherit controversy about it.

Yes. And we all know no one ever made any money off controversy.

Brushes with greatness.

Mike Toole shares his probably-soon-to-be-infamous story about Tom Brokaw.

My own encounters with celebrity are even more peripheral:
--spotted Col. Harlan Sanders dining in a Red Lobster in Louisville when I was about 14. Said nothing.
--ended up walking behind Rick Monday at a Mets/Dodgers game at Shea in when Paula and I got lost looking for the bathroom. I don't remember saying anything, but Paula may have asked him where the exit was.
--was snubbed by Mike Piazza at Spring training at Vero Beach the year he got traded; he signed for Elaine (with my pen), skipped me, signed several more, and ducked into the clubhouse.
--was snubbed by Stevie Nicks at a concert I went to with Angela, handshakes right and left of me.
--once briefly stalked Richard Karn outside a movie theater in Louisville.

Suzanne: "Hey, that's Al from Tool Time.
Me: "Yeah, I think you're right."

Elaine and Loraine were in the back seat and didn't see him. We went in, saw whatever movie we were there for, and as we were getting back in the car Elaine and Loraine spotted him again in the parking lot.

Loraine: "Hey, that's Al from Tool Time."
Suzanne and I: "We know. We told you that earlier."
Elaine, slipping into double-naught spy mode: "Follow him."

So we did. Down Hurstbourne Lane a couple of blocks, when he copped to the fact that he was being followed by four chicks with glasses, panicked, and zipped into a closed car dealership, so we zipped in after him and pulled up beside him. I'm not sure what he thought we were going to do to him, but whatever it was he wanted no part of it; with a look of naked, screaming terror he slammed his rental into reverse and roared out of the lot.

Elaine: "Step on it. He's getting away!"

But I suddenly came to my senses and we let him get away. I've wondered for years whether he ever mentioned it to anyone.

More in the continuing theme of undeserved hyperbole...

Michael Lind dissects Peter Singer's anti-Bush diatribe in the New Statesman; after pointing out Singer's lack of intellectual rigor (and internal consistency), Lind closes with this rather curious statement:

Bush, the worst president of my lifetime [emphasis mine, obviously--k], has the power to reduce otherwise intelligent people to sputtering rage. Singer's polemic, which tells us nothing we did not already know about Bush's beliefs, proves that it is a bad idea to sputter in print.

Granting that Lind might have been an infant during the Carter years, in consideration of the nature of the administration that ran dangerously amok during the eight years prior to Bush's ascension, I find the phrase "worst president of my lifetime" an incredible formulation, and I mean that literally. And that's really all I have to say about it; Lind has been classified and filed as a silly jackass. Moving on.

Radio shrapnel.

In response to a USA Today article about Blender magazine's compilation of the 50 worst hit tunes ever, Angela lists her five most-hated songs of all time:

1. "Too Shy" by Kajagoogoo
2. "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?" by Culture Club
3. "We Built This City" by Jefferson Starship
4. "Beth" by Kiss
5. Any whiney love ballad by Tim McGraw. Just pick one. I hate them all.

Can't really argue for the artistic merits of any of those...but are they *really* the worst songs you can come up with?

The rules as expressed by Blender are somewhat arbitrary; had to be a hit, but for some damn dumb reason they excluded "I'm Too Sexy", "The Macarena", and "Who Let the Dogs Out" on the questionable grounds of intentional cheesiness, then they apparently axed the bulk of the 70s because it was too easy. So really, they just indulged themselves in a little 80s hatefest; indeed, six of the top ten (or bottom ten, if you will) date from the 80s (seven if you count Vanilla Ice. He probably stole--er, recorded "Ice Ice Baby" in 89.):

1. We Built This City - Starship 1985
2. Achy Breaky Heart - Billy Ray Cyrus 1992
3. Everybody Have Fun Tonight - Wang Chung 1986
4. Rollin' - Limpbizkit 2000
5. Ice Ice Baby - Vanilla Ice 1990
6. The Heart of Rock & Roll - Huey Lewis & The News 1984
7. Don't Worry, Be Happy - Bobby McFerrin 1988
8. Party All the Time - Eddie Murphy 1985
9. American Life - Madonna 2003
10. Ebony and Ivory - Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder 1982

Sure, they all suck--but can anyone honestly tell me any of these songs are worse than Debbie Boone's "You Light Up My Life"? Are the lyrics to "We Built This City" really any dumber than the Holy Grail of rock tunes, "Stairway To Heaven"? So off the top of my head here's my top five of the moment, with new rules: 1) had to get radio play; "hit" is is a pretty arbitrary term these days, 2) has to make me lunge for the station button like my very life depends on not hearing the rest of the song, 3) nothing off-limits.

1. You Light Up My Life - Debbie Boone, 1977
Like an ice pick in the ear. A song tailor-made for cheesy midwestern weddings. I hate weddings.

2. Me & Bobby McGee - Janis Joplin, 1971
Faux populist profundity with the added tangy zest of faux nihilism. "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose", my ass.

3. Do Ya Think I'm Sexy - Rod Stewart, 1979
This song has nothing to redeem it.

4. Last Kiss - Pearl Jam, 1999
Eddie Vedder's clench-toothed monotone does this already shitty song no favors.

5. Home Sweet Home - Motley Crue, 1985
Mawkish sentiment is ill-paired with Roman orgy excess. One or the other, guys.